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60 grants from the shores of the Caspian Sea—"Aryans," as the Ger- mans believed their ancestors, too, to have been. Central to this literature were the Vedas, sacred scriptures be- lieved by Hindu tradition to be "not of human origin," having been composed by the gods themselves in a previous age. They were brought to the Indian subcontinent by the Aryan migrants sometime in the second millennium B.C., as oral traditions. But as time went on, more and more of the original 100,000 verses were lost; so, circa 200 B.C., a sage wrote down the remaining verses, dividing them into four parts: the Rig-Veda (the "Veda of Verses"), which is made up of ten books; the Sama-Veda (the "Chanted Vedas"); the Yajur-Veda (mostly sacrificial prayers); and the Atharva-Veda (spells and incantations). In time, the various components of the Vedas and the auxiliary literature that stemmed from them (the Mantras, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Upanishads) were augmented by the non-Vedic Pura- nas ("Ancient Writings"). Together with the great epic tales of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, they make up the sources of the Aryan and Hindu tales of Heaven and Earth, gods and heroes. Because of the long oral interval, the length and profusion of texts finally written down over many centuries, the many names, generic terms, and epithets employed for the deities interchange- ably—and the fact that many of these original names and terms were non-Aryan after all—consistency and precision are not hall- marks of this Sanskrit literature. Yet some facts and events emerge as basic tenets of the Aryan-Hindu legacy. In the beginning, these sources relate, there were only the celes- tial bodies, "The Primeval Ones Who Flow." There was an up- heaval in the heavens, and "The Dragon" was split in two by the "Flowing One of Storms." Calling the two parts by names of non- Aryan origin, the tales assert that Rehu, the upper part of the de- stroyed planet, unceasingly traverses the heavens in search of vengeance; the lower part, Ketu ("The Cut-off One"), has joined the "Primeval Ones" in their "flowing" (orbits). Many Ages then passed, and a dynasty of Gods of Heaven and Earth made its ap- pearance. The heavenly Mar-Ishi, who headed them, had seven (or ten) children by his consort Prit-Hivi ("The Broad One"), who personified the Earth. One of them, Kas-Yapa ("He of the Throne"), made himself chief of the Devas ("The Shiny Ones"), seizing the title Dyaus-Pitar ("Sky Father")—the undoubted source of the Greek title-name Zeus ("Dyaus") and its Roman parallel Jupiter ("Dyauspiter"). THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN